"When you looked down at Earth, did you always know where you were?"

November 28, 2015 9:37 AM

Chris Hadfield meets Randall Munroe - a conversation between the astronaut and the cartoonist.
posted by moonmilk (24 comments total)

I haven't even clicked the link for TFA but I'm fairly sure I can say "Thanks for posting!!"
posted by nevercalm at 9:42 AM on November 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

That was fun, folks like that should talk in public more, why couldn't they replace a few of the debates with just those guys chatting?
posted by sammyo at 9:51 AM on November 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

This is great. Thanks!
posted by mazola at 9:57 AM on November 28, 2015

RM When you’re orbiting, do you go far enough north to spot the crater in central Quebec? It’s one of my favourite geological features on satellite photographs.

CH Oh, Lac Manicouagan? We went right smack down over Lac Manicouagan! I used to be a fighter pilot and I flew F18s down inside Manicouagan. So it was beautiful to see it from space. It’s an asteroid crater they flooded as part of a hydroelectric project. That crater’s a couple of hundred million years old.

This is adorable.
posted by Itaxpica at 10:14 AM on November 28, 2015 [12 favorites]

Different content but part of a series of articles in today's Guardian magazine, I enjoyed the chat between Lauren Laverne and JK Rowling (despite not being a HP fan).
posted by biffa at 10:23 AM on November 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

I had never known what Randall Munroe looked like until this very moment. For some reason I had always imagined him to be wiry, with indistinguishable facial features, and wearing a hat.
posted by ardgedee at 10:23 AM on November 28, 2015 [51 favorites]

Thanks for posting this!
posted by Songdog at 10:36 AM on November 28, 2015

RM: There’s a common piece of advice you’re given, if you’re going to speak in public: open with a joke. Because it does so much. It tells the audience, right away, that the speaker looks at the world in a fun, normal-person way. Some of the first infographics I did started off as notes to myself: trying to plot out, for instance, how IP addresses are allocated. After a while I thought, “This is a neat thing I can share with people, and they can follow me along in that process of understanding.”

As a non-math person, I like xkcd for exactly this reason.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:14 AM on November 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

CH I sometimes think that the brain is normally like this flat little Jiffy bag. But if you can put it over the right heat source, suddenly it pops to a size you hadn’t anticipated.

that's a cracker metaphor. thanks for posting!
posted by Sebmojo at 12:08 PM on November 28, 2015 [6 favorites]

Do read Hadfield's book about becoming an astronaut and how those life lessons translate to living on earth. It's really, really good.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 12:50 PM on November 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

This was so...so....squee! I love them both even more.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 1:06 PM on November 28, 2015

Yay! Both of these guys are fantastic. Sometimes I get bogged down in all the things that are wrong with the world, and these two are the perfect antidote to that feeling. Their curiosity and enthusiasm are ridiculously contagious.
posted by vytae at 1:11 PM on November 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

Great interview, thanks for posting this! I recently read Hadfield's book An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth and second fifteen schnitzengruben's recommendation!
posted by amf at 2:27 PM on November 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Who wins in a fight, caveman cartoonist or astronaut?
posted by Smedleyman at 3:18 PM on November 28, 2015

I have written exactly one piece of fanfic ever, but it involves Chris Hadfield.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:09 PM on November 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

What is the deal with those pictures that make them both look like they really, really have to go to the bathroom?
posted by lagomorphius at 4:15 PM on November 28, 2015

That's one of the hidden secrets of the new Guardian offices in King's Cross - no loos. Cruelly, there is a bar on the ground floor. You have to piddle in Regent's Canal outside, and the lifts are so slow, and you have to stop by for a drink, that everyone ends up holding it in for as long as possible before making the dash. During the episode when Rusbridger was in charge of some of the Snowden files, he went without for 36 hours - at which point, even MI6 relented.

This also explains, inter alia, the tone of the Guardian leaders and Polly Toynbee's inscrutable expression.

(Hadfield later complained that, had he known, he'd have worn his special spacesuit undergarments.)
posted by Devonian at 4:37 PM on November 28, 2015 [10 favorites]

For a conversation between an astronaut and a cartoonist, there were suspiciously few cartoons of astronauts, or vice versa.
posted by goatdog at 6:31 PM on November 28, 2015

suspiciously few cartoons of astronauts, or vice versa.

spaceships full of cartoonists?

(This was great.)
posted by quinndexter at 6:43 PM on November 28, 2015

My only complaint about this article is that it was too short. I could read a discussion between these guys for hours.
posted by KGMoney at 6:59 PM on November 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

From the comments (which are worth reading):

"CH: The brightest minds in the world are at the point, now, where almost all of them can access the sum knowledge of the world.

"He means the internet, obviously, and that's why I think his optimism is hopelessly starry-eyed. 80 per cent of the internet is porn, 10 per cent is propaganda, five per cent is useful information and the other five per cent is lolcats."
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:11 PM on November 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

Chris Hadfield will be remembered for many things, chief among them in my mind, the fact that during an official chill on federally funded scientists discussing their work in Canada, he continued to share and explore and discover and make science cool and dlightful. During the dark years of the Harper regime, Hadfield shone so brightly, and with the chill off, it's interesting to see other scientists coming in from the cold to talk about what they've been learning about rocks and birds and fish and trees and water. There are many really neat ones out there that we simply haven't heard from for NEARLY TEN YEARS.

He is a superstar and all the more so for keeping on while our government nwas at war with people like him. May we have many more conversations like this. And may we never again elect a government that considers this kind of thing contemptible enough to ban.
posted by salishsea at 8:02 PM on November 28, 2015 [17 favorites]

"He means the internet, obviously, and that's why I think his optimism is hopelessly starry-eyed. 80 per cent of the internet is porn, 10 per cent is propaganda, five per cent is useful information and the other five per cent is lolcats."

I guess it turns out that the Sum Knowledge Of The World is slightly less awe-inspiring than it sounds. :-/

^{But... I guess you go to task with the sum knowledge of the world that you have, not the sum knowledge of the world that you might want...}
posted by anonymisc at 11:32 AM on November 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

Next podcast guest hosts? Or maybe for the Short Form MeFi podcast, maybe??
posted by wenestvedt at 8:25 PM on November 30, 2015